Sometimes history is ugly, but we must learn from history. There is a saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But, history has proven those friends often times prove to be quite ugly.
On April 13, 1943, Nazi Germany announced that it had uncovered a mass grave of Polish POWs in the Katyn Forest in western Russia. The Soviet Union denounced it as propaganda and blamed the Nazis for the massacre. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill defended the Soviet Union to the world and accused Germany of spreading rumors to drive a wedge between America and it's allies. 50 years later, the truth was uncovered when the Soviet Union admitted responsibility for executing more than 22,000 prisoners and blaming the Nazi's for the massacre.
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals led by Joseph Stalin and carried out by the Soviet secret police in 1940. In 1939, Poland was a battle ground between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union invaded Poland just days after Germany began it's own invasion. The Red Army met very little resistance, as the Polish forces were under orders not to engage the Soviets. 125,000 Polish nationals were imprisoned by the Soviet Police and subjected to lengthy interrogations. The prisoners assumed they would be released, but in March 1940 Joseph Stalin signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries". According to Soviet documents declassified in 1990, 21,857 of these were executed in the Katyn forest, and buried in a mass grave there.
In the heat of the war 1945, Franklin Roosevelt addressed congress and America in his state of the union to defend the Soviet Union and declare that the Nazi's claim was a baseless rumor. America had not yet learned the truth of the Red Army and the Katyn Massacre.
"Further desperate attempts may well be made to break our lines, to slow our progress. We must never make the mistake of assuming that the Germans are beaten until the last Nazi has surrendered.
And I would express another most serious warning against the poisonous effects of enemy propaganda.
The wedge that the Germans attempted to drive in western Europe was less dangerous in actual terms of winning the war than the wedges which they are continually attempting to drive between ourselves and our allies.
Every little rumor which is intended to weaken our faith in our allies is like an actual enemy agent in our midst- seeking to sabotage our war effort. There are, here and there, evil and baseless rumors against the Russians- rumors against the British—rumors against our own American commanders in the field.
When you examine these rumors closely, you will observe that every one of them bears the same trade-mark—"Made in Germany."
We must resist this divisive propaganda—we must destroy it -with the same strength and the same determination that our fighting men are displaying as they resist and destroy the panzer divisions."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16595
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/March-April-08/On-this-Day--Soviet-Union-admits-to-Katyn-Massacre.html
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